NEWSPAPERS, JOURNALS AND BOOKS
Many newspapers are available for free as part of the Burney Collection and the British Library 19th Century Newspaper Collection, which, although superseded by britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk, can still be accessed at many libraries through their licensed digital collections. Richard Heaton’s Newspaper Collection at bit.ly/richards-newspapers further provides access to transcripts and extracts from just under 900 fully searchable Georgian and early Victorian regional newspapers, predominantly for Lancashire and the south of England.
Welsh Newspapers Online, from the National Library of Wales, offers free access to more than one million pages from 120 Welsh newspapers at newspapers.library.wales. For Scottish residents, the archive of The Scotsman can be similarly accessed through the National Library’s licensed digital collections at auth.nls.uk/ eresources. The Google News Archive ( news.google.com/newspapers) also hosts the Glasgow Herald (1806–1990) and the Glasgow Advertiser (1783– 1801). For Belfast connections, Eddie’s Extracts at bit.ly/eddies-extracts is also worth a visit, while the Joseph McGarrity Newspapers collection held by Villanova University, Philadelphia, has some interesting Irish holdings at digital.library.villanova.edu/ Item/vudl:145635.
The official newspaper of record, the London Gazette, is freely available at www. thegazette.co.uk, alongside its Belfast and Edinburgh counterparts, detailing business ventures, bankruptcies, military promotions, civil honours and more. Digitised copies of the Dublin Gazette for 1750– 1809 can also be accessed at no cost from the library website of the Oireachtas , the Irish Parliament building, at opac.oireachtas.ie.
The British Medical Journal is at bmj.com/archive, while the Internet Library of Early Journals ( bodley.ox.ac.uk/ ilej) offers digitised editions of six periodicals from the 18th and 19th century, including the Gentleman’s Magazine and Notes and Queries. HathiTrust ( hathitrust.org) hosts millions of digitised books and journals from around the world, as do the Internet Archive ( archive.org) and books.google.co.uk.